Jake: UnForgiven Mistakes
by Davis Family Fan
Summary: Out of jealousy, anger, and rage, she made the biggest mistake of her life. Now, she will never be able to express how truly sorry she is.


I feel the need to rectify Guza's many errors. I'll be posting a series of different Jake one-shots concerning how his death has impacted the various people in Port Charles on many levels Guza seems to neglect.

Please Review.

**UNEDITED.**

**Un/Forgiven Mistakes**

**SAM**

She had waited in the penthouse for him. She did not know where he went, or at what time he would return, but she could not leave. She had stayed on the couch for hours, not getting a wink of sleep hoping that he might return home. But he never did. When sunlight finally began to creep through the windows, she knew he would not. Grabbing a piece of paper, she wrote him a quick note:

_I'm here for you when you're ready. I love you._

She placed it onto the coffee table knowing that he would see it the moment he entered. Knowing him as she did, she knew that he would enter, throw his keys onto the desk, remove his leather jacket, open the closet door, hang it up, and then reach for the box that held his most painful memories. He would move to the chair, put the box onto the coffee table, and just before opening it, he would see her note.

- "I'm waiting for you."

She locked the door behind her before making her way to the elevator. Her heart and head were heavy with sorrow and thoughts about the beautiful little boy who had lost his life less than twenty-four hours earlier. She had made so many mistakes in her life with him; many of which involved the sweet little boy who now laid on a cold slab at General Hospital's morgue. In spite of the amends she had made with his mother, adopted father, and the love of her life, she had yet to forgive _herself_ for what she had done… how she had wronged him.

- "I hope that you're resting in peace, little guy."

With tears threatening to well in her eyes, she quickly built an emotional levy and stepped into the elevator. She would not cry.

- "I hope you know how truly sorry I am for how cruel I was back then."

She had allowed insecurities, hatred for his mother, and anger at his father to allow her to stand idly by as an unstable woman kidnapped him while his mother's back was turned. She hired men to hold up his mother at gunpoint, while she walked with him and his little brother. And finally, most unforgiving of all, something that she could never utter to a living soul, she cursed his existence. An innocent child. She cursed his existence because she could never give to his father, a man who had given him up for fear that his life would be cut short due to the violence that would surround him, a child as his mother had.

- "I didn't mean it. I swear on my child's soul—"

Her baby. A child she had carried for nine months inside her, awaiting her arrival with more excitement than anyone could have ever understood, was taken from her far too soon. Taking not a single breath, her existence was wiped from the earth.

- "I meant you no harm."

She had never laid eyes on the child whose face she had imagined from the moment she had come to learn of her existence, but she loved her as though she had. She thought about the personality she would have, the stories she would tell, and the person she would become. She had longed for the love she would have given her. But it was not meant to be.

Stepping into her car, she looked at the time; it was six o'clock in the morning.

- "Sorry, Mom."

Pressing speed dial, she listened as the phone rang in her ears. She had already spent the night alone with her thoughts while she waited for Jason to arrive, she did not want to spend her drive doing the same. She needed someone to keep her company while she made her way home.

- "Hello?"

She let out a sigh of relief that the woman had answered.

- "Mom, it's me. I'm sorry I woke you. I just… I just needed to talk to someone and you were the first person I thought about calling."

She rolled over in her bed to look at the clock. Knowing that Jake had died the previous evening, Alexis knew it was only a matter of time before she heard from her daughter. She would have called her the moment she had learned about his death, but she decided to give her her space, especially to comfort Jason whom she had just learned was the boy's father.

- "Honey, it's fine. Are you okay?"

Alexis knew that she was not, but she did not know what else to say.

- "What are you doing awake so early?"

She blinked to stop the tears from continuing to escape. She could not cry. Not at that moment. It would be selfish. She would only be crying for her guilt, not for his lost life. It was not right.

- "I never went to sleep. I _couldn't_. I stayed up all night waiting for him to come home, but—"

She had never spoken so candidly about Jason to her mother; it was an unspoken rule between them. Her mother did not believe she should be with him; but she disagreed. There was nothing else to it. They agreed to disagree.

- "He never came home. He'll come back when he's ready."

Alexis sat up in her bed as though lying down would not have allowed her the ability to completely focus on her daughter. She could hear the hidden pain in her voice; it was lying in plain sight.

- "And how about you? How are you?"

She was exhausted.

- "I don't know. I'm… I'm sad—"

Alexis looked at the photo she had on her nightstand of her three girls. She passed her finger over Kristina's image while thoughts of the granddaughter she never knew ran through her head. Without any knowledge of what life she would miss, her death helped sustain her aunt's life. Alexis would forever be grateful to the girl.

- "Thinking about Lila?"

She let out a sigh as she turned the corner down the almost secluded and private street.

- "Hmm… yea. I guess. Things like this, they put your life into perspective, you know?"

She did know. She had come too close to losing her children on more occasions that she had ever wanted to recall. Unlike Elizabeth, however, her daughters' lives were saved; often at the twenty-fifth hour. There was no greater pain than thinking that you might have to bury your child, than actually having to do that very act. Wiping a tear from her cheek, Alexis nodded.

- "I can't even imagine ever losing you girls. If something like this were to ever happen to you, I don't know what I would do."

Sam could not help but smile. Having already experienced the loss of a child and the thought that she was once again alone in the world, Lila's death had instead opened the door to her life; she had released her from her dark hole of loneliness. She had brought Jason to her, helped save Kristina, and later, with Jason's help, Alexis, a mother she never thought she would have or that she deserved. She could not imagine losing any of the members of her family: her mother, sisters, or Jason.

- "I know. I feel the same way, Mom. I just… I… I think about Elizabeth… I tell myself that I can feel her pain because I've been there, but I haven't really. I mean, she had four years with this beautiful little boy. She watched him grow from this dependent infant to this walking and talking little person who loved… _motorcycles_—"

Her voice faltered as she thought about Jason. She let out a sigh so that she could find the strength to continue.

- "I never knew my baby. I never laid eyes on her. I never heard her cry. The only memory I have of her were of the constant movements she made inside of me."

She smiled at the memory.

- "She was like a fish."

Alexis moved from her bed to look out of her window; she stared at the lake, one of the two reasons she had purchased the house.

- "Sounds like her mother. You were an active swimmer inside of me, you know. I guess it's no shock you're a fish in the water now. She would've been just like you, honey."

It was as though the thought that her daughter would have been like her broke the dam to her emotions; for as hard as she had tried not to cry, she could not help herself.

- "Please, don't say that—"

The reality that a little boy's life was cut short tore a hole into her heart. The memories of all the pain that she had caused his family, the danger she had put him in, and the shame she felt at the thought that she could have ever done such a thing to a child… to another mother… smacked her in the face. It felt as though she were re-experiencing the pain of losing her own child all over again.

- "I wouldn't want her to be like me!"

Alexis wanted nothing more than to reach through the telephone and hold her daughter in her arms, to reassure her, calm her, and comfort her. She made do with what she could.

- "Honey, you are a beautiful, wonderful, caring woman. Your child would be blessed to be like you. What's wrong?"

But she could not tell her all that she had done to that boy. It was a secret that had managed to be kept in their small town in spite of the gossips that lived among them. She would have liked to keep it that way lest her mother think any lower of her than she should given all that she had done to her in the past.

- "I just—"

She parked her car.

- "I've done things that I'm not proud of, Mom."

She already knew that.

- "And you've turned your life around, honey. What's really going on with you? Where's all this coming from?"

Sam stepped out of the car and made her way to the front door.

- "I'm not some reformed con… I'm not. If Lila were alive, she'd—"

Her daughter would have been thirteen years old. She would have been ashamed to have her for a mother.

- "I'm just not who you think I am."

Alexis rubbed her face in confusion.

- "Then tell me who you are, honey."

She heard the front door buzz, followed by a series of beeps; the alarm system shut off.

- "Is that you at the door, Sam?"

Only hearing the woman's sniffles and soft cries, she made her way out of her room to the living room.

- "Sam?"

Her daughter had not made it further than the front step where she had come to sit.

- "Oh, honey—"

Still holding the phone to her ear, she cried; she could not utter another word.

- "Ok, I've got you."

Throwing her own phone onto the couch, Alexis immediately rushed to where Sam sat. She grabbed the phone from her hand and placed it beside her before pulling her daughter into her arms.

- "It's okay. I'm here for you… always."

She wanting nothing more than to carry the load of Sam's pain for the woman's grief was heavy.

- "Regardless of what you say, honey, I know who you are."

She held Sam's tear-stained face in her hands.

- "Whatever it is that's killing you slowly right now, you have to let it go. You have to, honey; you aren't your past. You're not that same person who hurt people because you were hurt. You are a kind, generous, and a beautiful woman, inside and out. You've made amends for what you've done, and to everyone you've hurt—"

Sam shook her head.

- "No… not everyone."

And now, she never could.

- "Not to Jake."

And so she sat with her mother unmasking the monster that had lived within her for four long years. She unburdened her soul to a woman who loved her unconditionally, but the pain nevertheless remained. In spite of the unmasked way in which she remained in her mother's loving arms, a woman in whom she had sought love and acceptance, for once it was not from her she sought absolution.


End file.
